


Old Pain

by RetroactiveCon



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Caretaking, Chronic Pain, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25414054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon
Summary: Iris glances toward the bedroom door and wipes away more tears. “I saw what Zoom did to him, saw the aftermath…and knowing that it still pains him after all this time…"
Relationships: Barry Allen/Leonard Snart/Iris West
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	Old Pain

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a sequel to [I Could Have Both](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25169209), because I'd originally hoped to write about Barry's chronic pain and then Len had other ideas. Thanks to the delightful SophiaCatherine for looking over some of the middle part with Iris when I got worried about how Iris came across - I hope it still looks okay!

Leonard wakes to a heartbreaking, pained cry. He sits up and flings out an arm, ready to protect his lovers from whatever harm is befalling them. Instead, he finds a wild-eyed Barry holding perfectly still. He’s clearly halfway through shifting positions, but judging by the pained contortion of his mouth, starting to move was a mistake.

“It’s your back, isn’t it?” Iris asks from Barry’s other side.

He nods. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says. From the frantic, hazy tone of his voice, Leonard suspects he’s still not fully awake. “I moved in my sleep and it _hurt_ and I shouldn’t have shouted, I’m sorry, I wasn’t awake enough to stop myself, I’m so sorry…” 

“How bad is it?” Leonard rolls out of bed, grabs the heating pad lamb from its spot on the dresser, and moves for the door. As much as he hates to leave his hurting Scarlet, the lamb is necessary—more for Barry than for him, because Barry doesn’t have pain medication. 

“A…seven, I think?” Barry sounds like he’s doing his best to downplay the pain. He always has, for as long as Leonard has been with him—a skill he perfected so his team wouldn’t feel bad that they had no painkillers to give him. “Not as bad as it sounds, just sleepy and no filter… _fuck_.”

Leonard hurries to the kitchen to heat up the lamb. Barry needs it much hotter than Leonard can tolerate because he generates so much heat of his own. This means it takes significantly longer to microwave. By the time Leonard returns to the bedroom, Iris has helped Barry turn over onto his front to make it easier to put the lamb on the small of his back.

“It’s okay,” Iris soothes. She’s brushing her fingers over his brow, not soft pets but none-too-gentle scrapes with her nails. Light touch is overstimulating for Barry during a flare-up; he only wants touched if it hurts enough to temporarily pull his attention away from the stabbing pain in his back. “Len is back, babe. At least you’ll have the lamb now.”

Leonard settles the lamb where Barry usually prefers it. “There,” he murmurs. He crawls into bed at Barry’s side, doing his best not to jostle him too much. He presses down too hard and causes the mattress to dip. A short, sharp sound is his only warning. Leonard hates himself for evoking that noise, but it pours out of him as a bitter, “And your brilliant team can make you alcohol, but they can’t synthesize a strong enough painkiller?”

Barry laughs humorlessly. “No point. I heal fast, allegedly.”

Iris makes a soft, desperate sound. “You don’t, though.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Barry digs his fingernails into the soft skin of his arm. Without thinking, Leonard grabs his wrist and pins it to the pillow. “Doesn’t matter, doesn’t _fucking_ matter.” Abruptly, his voice turns hard and irritated. Leonard is suddenly grateful to be holding his wrist; it means Barry’s attempt to get up fails immediately.

“What are you doing?” he demands.

“I should be able to run this off like everything else.” Barry tugs his wrist out of Leonard’s grasp but thankfully doesn’t make another attempt to get up. “I _hate_ this, I hate being useless and making you take care of me. I’m supposed to be the Flash.”

“You got these injuries being the Flash.” Iris sounds uncharacteristically harsh. When Leonard glances at her, there are tears in her eyes. “No, you’re not going to try to run this off. You’re going to be still and let us care for our Barry. Not the Flash, not anything else. _Our Barry_.”

Barry sighs and reaches out to clasp her hand. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “It’s just…there’s not that much you can do, and I know that upsets you as much as it does me.”

“We can sit with you and make sure you’re not alone.” Leonard shifts the lamb to make sure that there’s plenty of heat on Barry’s back. “You know what a difference that can make.”

Barry sighs and nods against the pillow. “Yeah. Yeah it does.”

It takes some time, but eventually, just as the sun comes up, Barry slips into a too-short, too-light doze. Once he does, Iris gets up and leaves the room. Leonard casts a reluctant glance at his sleeping Scarlet before following her. Loath as he is to leave Barry alone and in pain, he won’t go far, and at least for now, he suspects Iris needs him more. 

He finds her standing in the hallway, one hand over her mouth, tears cascading down her cheeks. “Oh, Iris.”

She allows him to draw her into a hug before letting out a little sob. “I—Len, I can’t do this. I can’t keep doing this. It feels like the two of you have been having bad pain days one after another, and I can’t—I can’t keep being the strong one. I hate seeing you both in pain and feeling like there’s nothing I can do…”

Leonard nods. Later, once Barry is getting real, restful sleep and Iris can relax, he’ll retreat and question whether the paltry pleasure he brings them is worth doubling the pain. For now, he has to take charge, because Iris is right: she can’t anymore. “I know, Iris. I know. It’s not fair to always ask you to be the one to take charge on our worst days.”

“It’s worse that it’s him—that it’s this injury.” Iris glances toward the bedroom door and wipes away more tears. “I saw what Zoom did to him, saw the aftermath…and knowing that it still pains him after all this time…” She sniffles. “Listen to me. As though it matters when he’s in there, in pain.”

“No. It does matter.” Leonard cradles her face. “We’ve asked too much of you lately without any recharge time. Take today. Go visit Linda or your family or the cute barista who’s been making eyes at you for weeks.” She manages a watery laugh. “I’ll look after Barry. You and he take such good care of me—it’s the least I can do. And after all this time, I pretty much know what works for him.”

Iris nods and presses her hand against his. “I think I’ll go visit Cecile,” she murmurs. “She might have words of wisdom about how to deal with everyone else’s pain, with the…” She taps the side of her head. “But what if Barry worries?”

“I’ll tell him you’ll be back soon and that I won’t leave.” He kisses her brow. “I mean it. Go.”

Reluctantly, Iris slips back into the bedroom, collects some of her clothes, and goes to change. While she gets ready to leave, Leonard rejoins Barry on the bed. His little Scarlet is sleeping fitfully, his face scrunched in pain. 

“I’m here.” Leonard wants to touch, but he doesn’t dare. He settles for murmuring, “I’m here, Scarlet. Whenever you need me.”

“Len.” Iris wanders over to his side of the bed so that they can speak in whispers. She’s dressed in the soft purple blouse that Leonard recognizes as her comfort outfit. She’s needed this break for days, he realizes, and hasn’t let herself take it. “You’re sure you want me to go? What if he wakes and he’s upset?”

“He won’t begrudge you some time to yourself.” Leonard leans up to give her a slow, gentle kiss. “Go. We won’t do too much damage in your absence.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” she murmurs, trying for humor. The worry in her eyes makes it fall short. “Take care of him, Len.”

He stays propped up on his elbow so he can watch her until she leaves the bedroom; then he sinks down next to Barry, curls up at his side, and sighs. “Stay asleep.” It’s more a wish than an order. It was barely three days ago he woke from a sound sleep because of pain in his shoulder; he knows how it feels to want to sleep when pain makes it impossible.

All told, Barry sleeps for about an hour. He wakes with a soft, pained sound and grabs at his pillow. “Iris?”

Leonard brushes off the hurt he feels that Barry doesn’t call for him. He doesn’t have time for self-pity. “I’m here, Scarlet. Iris isn’t here right now.”

Barry’s eyes fly open. “Is she okay?”

“She went to go see Cecile.” Leonard reaches down and touches the lamb. It’s gone cold, but he’s not sure Barry will want him to go reheat it now that Iris has left. 

Barry nods and lets his eyes fall closed again. “She needed a break. I don’t blame her.” He manages a weary laugh. “You had the bad shoulder pain and then that day where everything hurt, and then we had a meta problem, and now this. No, she needs some time.”

“So do you, and this isn’t the way you should have to take it.” Leonard reaches over to the bedside table and grabs a cup of orange juice. Getting Barry upright to drink would cause him unnecessary pain, so Leonard pokes a straw into his mouth and lets him sip. 

“You didn’t drug the juice, did you?” Barry jokes. Even without the pained grimace, it would have fallen flat. 

“You know I know that wouldn’t work.” Leonard waits until he’s drunk his fill; then he sets the cup aside. “The lamb is cold. Do you want me to reheat it?”

Barry shakes his head and reaches out a desperate hand. “Stay? I’d rather have you than the lamb. Distraction has always worked better than heat.”

Leonard nods. It works that way for him, too—he can take his pills and use the lamb, but until something else captures his attention, he’s so focused on the pain that it feels like nothing works. Being able to kneel for them or let them give him controlled pain—a spanking, a flogging—helps him, but it’s been harder to find something that works for Barry without jostling his back. “And do you just want me to talk?”

Barry nods feverishly. “Tell…tell me about what you and Mick would do, before you came to me and Iris.”

“You mean on bad pain days?” Leonard clarifies. When Barry nods, he stretches out on the mattress and makes a show of thinking. “Hmm. Well, we went back and forth as much as you and I do…and some days both of us would have flare-ups, and then we’d take turns figuring out what we could do for each other. If it was my shoulder acting up and not my thigh, I’d be the one to go get things, but anything that required two hands involved getting creative, since I can't use my right hand when my shoulder flares up, and his burns make moving his arms difficult…” 

“One of you held the thing and the other opened it?” Barry asks with a tight laugh.

Leonard chuckles. “We took everything out of jars the moment we bought it for that exact reason. Pickles, sauce, anything—out of the jar and into a container with an easy-open lid. Most of the time, thankfully, it didn’t matter, but the times it did would have been hell without forethought.”

Barry gets quiet for a minute. Presently, he admits, “The first time I had a really bad flare-up after I thought my back was healed, I was at CCPD. It was just low-level pain in the morning, which was weird because I thought I’d healed, but I could still go to work, and then…” He laughs. “You know the elevator at CCPD stops at the floor below mine, where Singh’s office and the holding rooms are. So I was stuck in my lab with no way down. I had to use my rolling chair just to get across my lab.”

Leonard scoffs in disgust. He’s not surprised—the police are some of the last people likely to take accessibility into account—but the thought of Barry stuck in his lab makes him feel ill. “What happened?”

“I had to stay until the pain was dull enough that I could get down the stairs, and even then I nearly fell on my face.” Barry shudders and clutches Leonard’s hand. “I was so humiliated, I felt so useless. I still do,” he adds in a whisper.

“You’re the furthest thing from useless,” Leonard says fiercely. “This, what you’re feeling now, is because you were brave enough to stand up to a speedster from another Earth. This is a reminder that you’re human, and you need care, and nobody should expect you to throw yourself into danger and walk away unscathed.”

Barry makes a soft sound that Leonard is tempted to call a sob. “I’m…I don’t know how I’m not useless when everything hurts so badly I can barely even move.”

“Your worth isn’t defined by what you can or can’t do any given day.” Leonard manages a crooked smile. “Look who you’re talking to. I had to have Mick get that into my head, and now it’s my turn to drive it into yours.”

Barry glances away. “I don’t…wanna feel this way,” he murmurs. “It’s just easy to hate myself when I’m in pain and I’m causing you and Iris pain and I can’t _do_ anything.”

“You don’t cause us pain.” Briefly, Leonard thinks that of all of them, he’s the one who causes an undue amount of pain, before realizing he’s got no grounds to think that and chide Barry for thinking the same. “We’ve asked too much of Iris recently, but that’s not on you—that’s just our hellish meta lives.”

Slowly, Barry nods. “I know. I just…don’t know how to believe it.”

“That’s what I’m for,” Leonard promises. “To tell you until you believe it.”

Barry doesn’t look completely convinced, but the way he squeezes Leonard’s fingers and whispers “I love you” lets Leonard know that he’s willing to try.


End file.
